Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Letting Go describes a simple and effective means by which to let go of the obstacles to Enlightenment and become free of negativity. During the many decades of the author’s clinical psychiatric practice, the primary aim was to seek the most effective ways to relieve human suffering in all of its many forms. The inner mechanism of surrender was found to be of great practical benefit and is described in this book.

Dr. Hawkins’s previous books focused on advanced states of awareness and Enlightenment. Over the years, thousands of students had asked for a practical technique by which to remove the inner blocks to happiness, love, joy, success, health, and, ultimately, Enlightenment. This book provides a mechanism for letting go of those blocks.

The mechanism of surrender that Dr. Hawkins describes can be done in the midst of everyday life. The book is equally useful for all dimensions of human life: physical health, creativity, financial success, emotional healing, vocational fulfillment, relationships, sexuality, and spiritual growth.

It is an invaluable resource for all professionals who work in the areas of mental health, psychology, medicine, self-help, addiction recovery, and spiritual development.

You can write a book review and share your experiences. Other readers will always be interested in your opinion of the books you've read. Whether you've loved the book or not, if you give your honest and detailed thoughts then people will find new books that are right for them.

CHAPTER
6
FEAR
The many faces of fear are familiar to us all. We have felt free-floating anxiety and panic. We have been paralyzed and frozen by fear, with its accompanying palpitations and apprehension. Worries are chronic fears. Paranoia is its extreme. In milder forms of fear, we are merely uneasy. When it is more severe, we become scared, cautious, blocked, tense, shy, speechless, superstitious, defensive, distrustful, threatened, insecure, dreading, suspicious, timid, trapped, guilty, and full of stage fright. There is fear of pain and suffering, fear of living, fear of loving, fear of closeness, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of God, fear of hell, fear of damnation, fear of poverty, fear of ridicule and criticism, fear of being trapped, fear of inadequacy, fear of danger, fear of disapproval, fear of boredom, fear of responsibility, fear of making a decision, fear of authority, fear of punishment, fear of change, fear of loss of security, fear of violence, fear of losing control, fear of feelings themselves, fear of manipulation, fear of being found out, fear of heights, fear of sex, fear of being on our own and being responsible, and fear of fear itself.
There is, moreover, a cause of fear of which many people are unaware: the fear of retaliation. This fear arises from the desire to strike out, to hit back, and to attack. As we let go of fear, we find that behind it, there is often anger at the object of fear itself. The willingness to let go of the fear and overcome it already moves us up to the next level, which is anger. The fact that we can face this combination of fear/anger feelings and surrender it moves us instantly up to pride and courage.
The Fear of Public Speaking
One excellent experiment is to let go of the fear of fear itself. When we stop being afraid of fear, we notice that it is just a feeling. In fact, fear is far more tolerable than depression. Surprisingly, to a person who has been in bad depression, the re-emergence of fear is welcomed. It is better to feel scared than hopeless.
To understand how fear is self-reinforcing, we have to stop and look at another one of the laws of consciousness: What one holds in mind tends to manifest. What this means is that any thought which we consistently hold in mind and consistently give energy to will tend to come into our life according to the very form in which our mind has held it. Thus, fear engenders fearful thoughts. The more we hold these thoughts in mind, the more likely the feared event will happen in our life, which again reinforces our fear.
As a medical intern, there was a fear of public speaking. At the very thought of getting up in front of medical colleagues to present a patient’s case, the voice would fail out of sheer fright. Because of holding that fear, the inevitable situation arose that necessitated having to present the case of a patient to the staff meeting. After reading a few paragraphs of the case history, the voice began to falter and get weaker and eventually stopped. The very fear that had been held in mind came to pass and, of course, that occurrence reinforced a fear of public speaking and brought on apathy about it. Henceforth, for many years, the limiting belief system operated: “I can’t speak in public. I’m just not a public speaker.” Any and all speaking occasions were avoided, with the consequent loss of selfesteem, avoidance of activities, and limitation of vocational goals.
As the years passed, the fear took a somewhat different form. The belief system was: “I don’t want to speak, because I might be a boring and bad speaker.” Finally, an occasion arose where it was necessary to speak in a public meeting. There was the opportunity to sit down and find the courage to face the fear. The inner dialogue was: “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen? Well, you could be terribly boring.” This brought to mind all the boring speeches given by others, and then it became possible to accept that a boring speech was actually common and certainly not the end of the world. There was a letting go of the pride and vanity behind that fear. Yes, it just might happen that the speech would be terribly boring.
The fateful day finally arrived. The paper was written out so all that was needed was to read it. Yes, it would have been far more interesting to give it extemporaneously, but there was an acknowledgement and acceptance of the fear, and so the speech was written out beforehand. The moment arrived to ascend the podium. Despite the inner fear and reading the speech in a flat monotone voice, the feat was accomplished. Afterwards some friends said, “That was technically a good paper but, boy, it sure was boring.” The inner self, however, didn’t care; it was jubilant that there had been the courage and acceptance to face the situation and actually do it. The fact that it was boring was irrelevant. What was important was that it was done at all. Self-esteem increased because the fear and inhibition had been overcome, and speaking engagements no longer had to be avoided. In fact, the practice developed to begin all presentations with a warning to the audience, “I am one of the most boring speakers around and, in fact, I can be quite tedious.” Surprisingly, this brought a laugh from the audience. Their laughter signified acceptance of our common humanness, and so the fears were lifted.
It was discovered that humor is valuable in public speaking. It is a way of just being at one with the humanness of the audience and discovering their compassion. Once we are united with them in compassion, we can feel their encouragement as they cheer us on. We love them for relieving our fear and accepting us, and they love us back for doing the very thing that they themselves fear. Once this evolution through the levels of emotion is made, there is an enjoyment of public speaking. We find out that part of the mind can be quite funny when the occasion arises.
Eventually, with complete surrender, reading a prepared speech dropped off and the speaking became extemporaneous. With more experience, the public speaking improved, which engendered more speaking engagements. This allowed the accomplishment of many vocational goals that heretofore had been thwarted. There were appearances in the national media, such as talk shows on television. It is a long step from being too frightened even to read a case history in front of a few interns to enjoying oneself speaking on a television network to millions of viewers on The Barbara Walter’s Show.
We all derive great benefit from liberating ourselves out of a fearful inhibition into successful functioning, because that learning process automatically spills over into many other areas of our life. We become more capable, freer and happier and, with that, there is an inner peace of mind.
The Healing Effect of Love
Fear is so pandemic in our society that it constitutes the predominant ruling emotion of our world, as we know it. Fear was also the predominant emotion among the thousands of patients treated during the decades of clinical practice. Fear is so extensive and takes so many forms that there are not enough pages in this book to enumerate all of its varieties.
Fear is associated with our survival, and so it is given a special accord in our minds. For most people, fear is so all-pervasive that their life really constitutes one giant set of compensatory devices to conquer their fears. However, even this does not suffice, so that the media present us over and over again with fearful situations, as in this morning’s news: “Terrorist group threatens to poison our food supply.” Such headlines are constant, as though to give the mind further opportunities to master that most dreaded of all emotions. As the lyrics of the song put it, “We are caught between a fear of living and a fear of dying.”
When all the mind’s compensatory devices fail and fear spills forth into consciousness as overt anxiety attacks or phobias, the person is labeled as having an anxiety neurosis. It is informative to note that the tranquilizer Valium is the biggest selling drug in America.
Fears tend to escalate. Thus, the typical patient with phobias shows a progressive extension of the fear into more and more avenues of life, leading to further and further restrictions of activity, and, in severe cases, to total immobilization. This was the case of a patient named Betty.
Betty was thirty-four years old, but she looked much older because she was thin and drawn. She entered the office carrying armloads of paper bags, which were later found to contain 56 different bottles of health store preparations, vitamins, nutritional supplements, plus several bags of special food. Her fear had started out as a germ phobia and soon everything around her seemed to be possibly contaminated with germs. She had many health fears of contracting contagious diseases, which had progressed now to a fear of cancer. She believed every scare story she read, so she was afraid of nearly every food, the air she breathed, and getting sunshine on her skin. She wore white clothes because she was afraid of dyes in the materials.
In the office, she would never sit down because she was afraid that the chair might be contaminated. Whenever she needed a prescription, she asked that it be written from the middle of the prescription pad which had not been touched. Furthermore, she wanted to tear the page from the pad herself; she didn’t want me to touch it because possibly I had gotten germs from shaking hands with the last patient. She wore white gloves at all times. She requested to be treated by telephone as she was too afraid of making the trip to the office again.
The following week on the telephone, she said that she was afraid to get up. She would call from home while still in bed because now she was afraid to go out on the streets. She had developed a fear of muggers, rapists, and air pollution. At the same time, she was afraid to stay home in bed for fear that she might get worse and, to compound all her other fears, she was afraid that she was losing her mind. She was afraid that the medication wouldn’t help her and that it might have side effects, but she was afraid not to take it for fear that she would not get better. Now she said that she had a fear that she might choke on the pills and had stopped taking even her health pills, much less the prescribed medication.
Her fears were so paralyzing that every therapeutic maneuver was totally stymied. She wouldn’t allow me to talk to her family. She was afraid they would find out that she was seeing a psychiatrist and think she was crazy. I was totally baffled and racked my brain for weeks on how I could possibly help her. Finally, I let go. I experienced the relief of surrender in that I just totally gave up: “There is absolutely nothing I can do to help her. The only thing left to do is just to love her.”
And, so, that’s what I did. I just thought of her lovingly, and frequently I sent her loving thoughts. I gave her as much love as I could possibly give when we talked on the telephone and, finally, after a couple of months of “loving therapy,” she got sufficiently better to come to the office. As time went on, she improved and her fears and inhibitions began to diminish, though she never did develop any insight. She was too afraid of talking about psychological matters, she said, and so over the months and eventually years of treatment, the only thing I ever did was to love her.
This case illustrates a concept that we previously presented in the chapter on apathy; that is, a higher vibration, such as love, has a healing effect on a lower vibration, such as that in the patient’s case, fear. This love is the mechanism of reassurance, and very often we can quiet another person’s fears by our mere physical presence, and by the loving energy that we project to them and with which we surround them. It is not what we say, but the very fact of our presence that has the healing effect.
We can learn another one of the laws of consciousness: Fear is healed by love. This is the central theme of the series of books by psychiatrist Jerry Jampolsky (e.g., Love is Letting Go of Fear). This was also the basis of the healing that went on at the Attitudinal Healing Center in Manhasset, Long Island, of which I was co-founder and medical advisor. Attitudinal healing has to do with group interaction with patients who have fatal and catastrophic illnesses, and the whole process of healing has to do with the letting go of fear and replacing it with love.
This is the same mechanism of healing demonstrated by the great saints and illumined healers, whose very presence has the power to heal because of the intense vibration of love which they radiate. This healing power—the basis of spiritual healing—is also transmitted by loving thoughts. The multitudes of people down through recorded history who have healed by just this kind of love are legendary. In recent history, for instance, Mother Teresa is credited with healing great numbers of people by these very mechanisms of unconditional love and illumined presence. To people who are unfamiliar with the laws of consciousness, these types of cures seem miraculous. But to those who are familiar with the laws of consciousness, such phenomena are commonplace and to be expected. High levels of consciousness are in themselves capable of healing, transforming, and enlightening others. The value of the surrendering mechanism is that, by letting go of the blocks to love, our capacity to love increases progressively, and loving energy has the capacity to heal ourselves as well as others.
The only drawback to these types of healings is that often the healing is sustained while in proximity to a person capable of radiating high levels of love, but the illness returns when people leave that presence, unless they themselves have learned to elevate their own consciousness.
“Well,” you might ask, “if sending loving thoughts has a healing power, how come we see all the sick people in hospitals, whose families are so solicitous? Why does the love of the family not heal the patient?” The answer is to look at the kinds of thoughts that are being sent by the family to the patient. As you examine them, you will find that they are primarily thoughts of anguish and fear, accompanied by guilt and ambivalence.
We might picture love to be like the sunlight and negative thoughts like the clouds. Whereas our higher, greater Self is like the sun, all the negative thoughts, doubts, fears, anger, and resentments that we hold dim the light of the sun and, finally, the light comes through only weakly. It was Jesus Christ who said that we all, with faith, potentially have the power to heal. The saint, or person of high consciousness, is by definition one who has removed the clouds of negativity and radiates the full healing power of the sun. That is also why saintly beings have such magnetic power that they attract multitudes to their physical presence. As an example, when the late Indian saint Sri Ramana Maharshi had a birthday, 25,000 people stood in the sweltering tropical sun shoulder-to-shoulder in one solid mass to celebrate his presence and wish him well.
As we consistently let go of resisting our fears and allow them to be surrendered, the energy that was tied up in the fear is relinquished and now becomes available to shine forth as the energy of love. Therefore, unconditional love has the greatest power of all, and that love is the power of the celebrated saints. Unconditional love is also the power of the mother and of the father, the presence of whom is so essential to the children’s learning to love as they grow. It was Sigmund Freud who observed that the most fortunate thing that can happen to us growing up is to be our mother’s favorite child.
What about those of us who did not have the fortunate experience of being bathed in unconditional love as we grew up? There is the commonly held belief that if we did not have this experience, then we are somehow scarred or crippled for life; actually, this is not so. A person who has experienced a great deal of love in early life has fewer fears and a head start, but this love is intrinsic within all of us. By the very nature of our being and by the very nature of the life energy that flows through us and empowers us to breathe and to think, we all have that same vibrational energy level of love within us.
If, in looking at ourselves, we see that we have allowed the experience of our own nature to become blocked off by extensive fears, then we can rediscover the love within us by utilizing the mechanism of surrender and, thus, letting go of the clouds of negativity. By rediscovering this inner love, we rediscover the true source of happiness.
Owning the “Shadow”
One of the blocks to emotional development is the fear of what lies buried in our unconscious. Carl Jung called this area, which we are unwilling to look at and to own, the “shadow.” He said that the self cannot become healed and whole unless we look at and acknowledge the shadow. This means that buried within us all, in what Jung called the “collective unconscious,” is everything that we most dislike admitting about ourselves. The average human, he said, would much rather project his shadow onto the world and condemn it and see it as evil, thinking that his problem is to battle with evil in the world. In actuality, the problem is merely to acknowledge the presence of such thoughts and impulses in ourselves. By acknowledging them, they become quiet. Once they are quiet, they no longer unconsciously run us.
In looking at our fears of the unknown, which are really fears of what is in the depths of the unconscious, it is useful to have a sense of humor. Once looked at and acknowledged, the shadow no longer has any power. In fact, it is only our fear of these thoughts and impulses that give them any power. Once we become acquainted with our shadow, we no longer have to project our fears upon the world, and they begin to evaporate rapidly.
What makes the endless television programs, which are concerned with mayhem and its various forms, so attractive? It is because what is being acted out on the screen, where it is safe, are all the forbidden unconscious fantasies in our own psyche. Once we are willing to look at the same movies on the TV screen of our own minds and see whence they really originate, the attraction of such “entertainment” disappears. People who have acknowledged the content of their own shadow have no interest in crime, violence, and fearful disasters.
One of the blocks to becoming acquainted with the fears in one’s own mind is the fear of the opinions of others. The wanting of their approval goes on inside of our minds in a constant fantasy. We identify with the opinions of others, including authority figures, and coalesce this in such a way that we hear it as our own opinion of ourselves.
In looking at fears, then, it is well to remember that Carl Jung saw this reservoir of the forbidden inside the shadow as a part of the collective unconscious. The term collective unconscious means that everybody has these thoughts and fantasies. There is nothing unique about any of us when it comes to the way we symbolize our emotions. Everybody secretly harbors the fear that they are dumb, ugly, unlovable, and a failure.
The unconscious mind is not polite. It thinks in gross concepts. When it thinks of the phrase “Murder the bum!,” the unconscious literally means that. Look deep within yourself the next time somebody cuts you off in traffic, and picture what you would really do to that person if you were strictly honest with yourself and did not censor the image coming to mind. You’d like to run them off the road, wouldn’t you? Pulverize them. Push them off the cliff. Isn’t that right? That’s the way the unconscious thinks.
The reason that a sense of humor is useful is because these images are comical once we look at them. There is nothing awful about it; it is just the way the unconscious handles images. It doesn’t mean that you are a rotten person or that you are potentially a criminal. It just means that you have gotten honest and faced how the human animal mind operates in this dimension. There is no point in getting melodramatic, self-critical, or tragic about it. The unconscious is crude and uncivilized. While your intellect went to prep school, your unconscious remained in the jungle where it is still swinging in the trees! Looking at the shadow side is not a time to get prissy or squeamish. It’s not a time to take it literally either, because the symbols of the unconscious are just that: they are symbols, and they are primitive in nature. If worked with consciously, they can empower us rather than inhibit us.
It takes a lot of energy to keep the shadow buried and to suppress our multitude of fears. The result is energy depletion. On the emotional level, it is expressed as an inhibition of the capacity to love.
In the world of consciousness, like goes to like, so that fear attracts fear just as its corollary is true that love attracts love. The more fear we hold, the more fearful situations we attract to our life. Each fear requires additional energy to create a protective device until, finally, all of our energy is drained into our extensive defensive measures. The willingness to look at a fear and work with it until we are free of it brings about immediate rewards.
Each of us has within us a certain reservoir of suppressed and repressed fear. This quantity of fear spills into all areas of our life, colors all of our experience, decreases our joy in life, and reflects itself in the musculature of the face so as to affect our physical appearance, our physical strength, and the condition of health in all of the organs in the body. Sustained and chronic fear gradually suppresses the body’s immune system. With kinesiologic testing, we can instantly demonstrate that a fearful thought causes a major reduction in muscle power and deranges the energy flow down the body’s energy meridians to the body’s vital organs. Although we know that it is totally damaging to our relationships, health, and happiness, we still hang on to fear. Why is that?
We have the unconscious fantasy that fear is keeping us alive; this is because fear is associated with our whole set of survival mechanisms. We have the idea that, if we were to let go of fear, our main defense mechanism, we would become vulnerable in some way. In reality, the truth is just the opposite. Fear is what blinds us to the real dangers of life. In fact, fear itself is the greatest danger that the human body faces. It is fear and guilt that bring about disease and failure in every area of our lives.
We could take the same protective actions out of love rather than out of fear. Can we not care for our bodies because we appreciate and value them, rather than out of fear of disease and dying? Can we not be of service to others in our life out of love, rather than out of fear of losing them? Can we not be polite and courteous to strangers because we care for our fellow human beings, rather than because we fear losing their good opinion of us? Can we not do a good job because we care about the quality of our performance and we care about our fellow workers? Can we not perform our job well because we care about the recipients of our services, rather than just the fear of losing our jobs or pursuing our own ambition? Can we not accomplish more by cooperation, rather than by fearful competition? Can we not drive carefully because we have a high regard for ourselves and care for our welfare and those who love us, rather than because we fear an accident? On a spiritual level, isn’t it more effective if, out of compassion and identification with our fellow human beings, we care for them, rather than trying to love them out of fear of God’s punishment if we don’t?
Guilt
One particular form of fear is what we call guilt. Guilt is always associated with a feeling of wrongness and potential punishment, either real or in fantasy. If punishment is not forthcoming in the external world, it expresses itself as self-punishment on an emotional level. Guilt accompanies all of the negative emotions and, thus, where there is fear, there is guilt. If you think a guilty thought and have somebody test your muscle strength, you will see that the muscle instantly goes weak. Your cerebral hemisphere has become desynchronized and all of your energy meridians are thrown out of balance. Nature, therefore, says that guilt is destructive.
If guilt is so destructive, then why are there such paeans of praise allotted to it? Why do so-called experts view guilt as beneficial? For example, a psychiatrist wrote a magazine article in praise of guilt, declaring: “Guilt is good for you.” He then qualified the statement with “appropriate guilt.” Let’s look at what guilt is really all about and see if we agree or not.
When you cross the street, you look both ways to see if a car is coming. How did this come about? When you were a child, you were told that it was “bad” to cross the street. Thus, we see that guilt is really a substitute for a sense of reality in a mind that is undeveloped, such as that of a child. It is a learned behavior which is purportedly pragmatic: to prevent further error or the repetition of a mistake. Ninety-nine percent of guilt has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. In fact, the most pious, meek, and harmless individuals are often riddled with guilt. Guilt is really self-condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as a human being.
Guilt is as prevalent as fear, and we feel guilty no matter what we are doing. A part of our mind says that we really ought to be doing something else. Or, whatever we are actually doing at the moment, we ought to be doing “better.” We “should” be getting a better golf score. We “should” be reading a book instead of watching television. We “should” make love better. Cook better. Run faster. Grow taller. Be stronger. Be smarter. Be more educated. In between the fear of living and the fear of dying is the guilt of the moment. We seek to escape it by remaining unaware of it through suppression, repression, projecting it onto others, and escapism.
Remaining unconscious of guilt (repression), however, does not solve it. The guilt re-emerges in the form of self-punishment and through accidents, misfortune, loss of jobs and relationships, physical disease and sickness, tiredness, exhaustion, and the multiple ways the ingenious mind figures out how to bring about the loss of pleasure, joy, and aliveness.
Guilt represents death just as love represents life. Guilt is part of the smaller self and underlies our willingness to believe negative things about ourselves. The happiness and joy of the day is instantly destroyed by one negative remark from a family member, friend, or neighbor. Physical disease is unlikely to exist without guilt, and guilt is a denial of our inner intrinsic innocence.
Why do we buy into so much garbage? Is it not because of our very innocence? Is it not because, as we grew up, we trusted that what others were telling us was the truth? And even currently, do we still trust what others are telling us is the truth? Is it not so that we have bought into ten thousand lies and are willing to buy another ten thousand out of the naïveté of our inner innocence? Is not that inner innocence the very reason for our exploitability? In fact, when we look deep within ourselves, is it not because of our very innocence that we believe ourselves to be guilty?
It is because of our own inner innocence that we have bought into all the negativity of the world and allowed it to kill our aliveness, destroy our awareness of who we really are, and sell us the pathetic little smallness for which we have settled. Is not ours the innocence of the newborn that cannot defend itself and, with no capacity for discernment, could only allow itself to be programmed, like a computer?
To see this means to become conscious. We hear of consciousness-raising programs and weekend seminars to expand our consciousness. What does this mean? To get some new complicated formulas? To get programmed with somebody else’s idea of mystical truth?
Most of the consciousness programs boil down to this essential point: become aware of what we are buying into, what we are accepting daily. Let’s look at what we have already been programmed with and begin to question it, disassemble it, and let it go. Let’s wake up and free ourselves from being exploited and enslaved by the negative programming of the world. We will see it for what it is, which is an attempt by others to control us; exploit us; extract our money, our services, our energy, our loyalties; and capture our mind. The mechanisms whereby this comes about were so beautifully exemplified in the movie, Tron, in which the very function of “master control” was to enslave by progressive programming.
When we see the truth of how programming happens, we will see that we are the pure, blank computer. We are the innocent space in which the programming is occurring. When we look at all of this, we are going to get angry. Anger is better than resignation, apathy, depression, and grief! It means to take charge of our mind instead of handing it to the television set, the newspaper, the magazines, the neighbors, the conversations in the subway, the chance remarks of the waitress, the garbage in and the garbage out. What went into our memory banks was garbage, and when we see this, we will have much less fear. We will enjoy starting to let the feelings come up, seeing them for what they are, clearing out all of the garbage, and letting it all go.
Once we have looked deep within ourselves and found that innate inner innocence, we will stop hating ourselves. We will stop condemning ourselves and stop buying into the condemnation of others and their subtle attempts to invalidate our worth as human beings. It’s time to re-own our own power and stop giving it away to every passing scammer who jiggles our fears and shakes loose some money out of our pocketbook or enslaves us to their cause, living off of our energy. It’s easy to get away from all that fear because we have the power of choice now.
We fear that the inner voyage of discovery will lead us to some dreadful, awful truth. In its programming of our minds, this is one of the barriers that the world has set up to prevent us from finding out the real truth. There is one thing the world does not want us to find out and that is the truth about ourselves. Why? Because then we will become free. We can no longer be controlled, manipulated, exploited, drained, enslaved, imprisoned, vilified, or disempowered. Therefore, the inner voyage of discovery is cloaked over with an aura of mystery and foreboding.
What is the real truth about this voyage? The real truth is that, as we go within and discard one illusion after another, one falsehood after another, one negative program after another, it gets lighter and lighter. The awareness of the presence of love becomes stronger and stronger. We will feel lighter and lighter. Life becomes progressively more effortless.
Every great teacher since the beginning of time has said to look within and find the truth, for the truth of what we really are will set us free. If what is to be found within ourselves were something to feel guilty about, something that is rotten, evil and negative, then all the world’s great teachers would not advise us to look there. On the contrary, they would tell us to avoid it at all costs. We will discover that all of the things the world calls “evil” are right on the surface; they are right on the top, as the superficial, outer thin layer. Beneath these errors is mistakenness. We are not rotten—only ignorant.
As the quantity of guilty fear and the energy accompanying it are relinquished, we will notice that physical diseases and symptoms begin to disappear. The capacity to love ourselves in the form of increased self-esteem returns and with it comes the capacity to love others. Being freed from guilt brings about a renewal of life energy. This can be dramatically witnessed in many people who are converted through religious experience. The sudden freedom from guilt through the mechanism of forgiveness is responsible for thousands of recoveries from serious and advanced diseases. Whether or not we agree with their religious concept is immaterial. What is important to notice is that the alleviation of guilt is accompanied by a resurgence of life energy, well-being, and physical health.
When it comes to healing ourselves and increasing our own emotional health, it “pays to be paranoid.” We become aware of all the guilt-mongers in our life and their deleterious influences.
We can ask ourselves, could we not achieve the same motivation or behavior out of love rather than out of fear and guilt? Is guilt the only reason we don’t stab our neighbor? Why couldn’t it be that we would refuse to stab our neighbor because we love and care for him as a fellow human being who is intrinsically innocent and who is struggling to grow, but may make mistakes along the way just as we, ourselves, have done? Would not following religious teachings, whatever they are, be more effective if done out of love and appreciation, rather than out of guilt and fear? We can ask ourselves, what do we really need guilt for anyway? What possible service do we get out of it? Are we so miserably stupid that we behave only out of guilt? Are we so unconscious? Cannot consideration for the feelings of others replace guilt as a motivation for appropriate human behavior?
As we examine these issues and look at their social origins, we see that the Middle Ages are far from over. The Inquisition has merely taken on newer and subtler forms of cruelty. We have unwittingly bought into a system of negativity that is currently running the planet. To make wrong and to make guilty is really a form of cruelty, is it not? We have allowed others to program us with methods of self-torture, and we can see that we have retaliated by inviting others to torture themselves in return. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by guilt, and we turn it around and use that same mechanism of guilt to try to exploit and control others.
The degree to which we have not allowed ourselves to experience the reality of our true Self is represented by our resentment toward those who have actually done so. We resent their aliveness in the areas in which we feel disabled. This sobering truth is represented by the story of the man who walks along the beach and comes upon a fisherman with a pail full of crabs. He says to the fisherman, “You’d better put a cover on that pail or the crabs will get out.” “Well, no,” said the wise old fisherman. “There is no need for that. You see, as one crab crawls up the side of the pail to get out, the other crabs reach up and grab him and pull him back down. So there’s no need for a cover.”
As we keep letting go, getting lighter, and becoming freer, we will, unfortunately, see that the nature of the world is like that pail of crabs. And, then, the full extent of its negativity becomes apparent. When we become totally aware of the bill of goods that we have been sold, it is very likely that we will feel anger and a strong desire to become liberated from the constraints of negativity.
CHAPTER
4
APATHY AND DEPRESSION
Apathy is the belief, “I can’t.” It is the feeling that we cannot do anything about our situation and no one else can help. It is hopelessness and helplessness. It is associated with such thoughts as: “Who cares?”; “What’s the use?”; “It’s boring”; “Why bother?”; “I can’t win anyway.” This is the role exhibited by Eeyore, the glum character in “Winnie the Pooh” cartoons who says: “Oh well. Won’t do any good anyway.” Discouragement. Defeat. Impossible. Too hard. All alone. Give up. Isolated. Estranged. Withdrawn. Cut off. Desolate. Depressed. Depleted. Unfulfilling. Pessimistic. Careless. Humorless. Meaningless. Absurd. Pointless. Helpless. Failure. Too tired. Despair. Confused. Forgetful. Fatalistic. Too late. Too old. Too young. Mechanical. Doomed. Negative. Forlorn. Useless. Lost. Senseless. Bleak. Blasé.
The biologic purpose of apathy is to summon aid, but part of the feeling is that no help is possible. Much of the world’s population is functioning on the level of apathy. For them, there is no hope that they will be able to meet their basic needs, nor will help be forthcoming from elsewhere.
The average person is often apathetic in a number of areas in life, but only periodically faces overwhelming apathy about their whole life situation. Apathy indicates a lack of life energy and is close to death. This was observed during the World War II blitz of London. Infants were removed to nurseries and remote safe sections of England where their physical, nutritional, and medical needs were well attended. However, the infants developed apathy and began to fail; they lost their appetites and the death rate was high. It was discovered that apathy resulted from a lack of nurturing and emotional closeness to a mothering figure. It was an emotional state and not a physical one. Without love and affection, they lost the will to live.
In our country, we see depressed economic areas where an entire local population goes into apathy. When people from such areas appear on the television news, it is often with such comments as, “When the welfare check runs out, I guess we just face starvation; there’s no hope for us.”
Feelings of apathy about the letting go technique itself may appear as resistances. These may take the form of attitudes and thoughts such as: “It won’t work anyway”; “What’s the difference?”; “I’m not ready for this yet”; “I can’t feel”; “I’m too busy”; “I’m tired of letting go”; “I’m too overwhelmed”; “I forgot”; “I’m too depressed”; “I’m too sleepy.” The way out of apathy is to remind ourselves of our intention, which is to get higher and freer, to become more effective and happy, and to let go of the resistance to the technique itself.
“I Can’t” vs. “I Won’t”
Another way out of apathy is to look at the payoff we are getting out of the apathetic attitudes. The payoff may be in the face-saving excuses to cover up what is actually fear. Since in reality, we are very capable beings, most “I can’ts” are really “I won’ts.” Behind the “I can’ts” or the “I won’ts” is frequently a fear. Then, when we look at the truth of what is behind the feeling, we have already moved up the scale from apathy to fear. Fear is a higher energy state than apathy. Fear at least begins to motivate us into action and, in that action, we can again surrender fear and move up to anger or pride or courage, all of which are higher states than apathy.
Let’s take a typical human problem and trace how the mechanism of surrender works to free us from an inhibition. Public speaking is one of the most common inhibitions. On the level of apathy in this arena, we say: “Oh, I can’t possibly speak in public. It is way too overwhelming. Nobody will want to hear me anyway. I don’t have anything worth saying.” If we remind ourselves of our intention, we will see that the apathy is merely covering up fear. Now, the thought of speaking in public is frightening, not hopeless. This brings about a certain clarity. The facts are not that we “can’t,” but merely that we are “afraid.”
As this fear comes up and is let go, we become aware of the fact that we have a desire to do the very thing that we fear. Now when looking at the desire, which is blocked by fear and perhaps compounded by some grief over lost opportunities in the past, anger arises. At this point, we have already moved from apathy, to grief, to desire, and up to anger. In anger there is much more energy and capacity for action. Anger often takes the form of resentment, such as resentment that we agreed to the public speaking and now feel obligated to do it.
There is also anger about our fear, which has blocked accomplishment in the past, and the anger leads to a decision to do something about it. This decision might take the form of a public speaking course. When we sign up for a public speaking course, we have already moved up to the energy of pride in that we have finally taken the bull by the horns and are doing something about it. On the way to the speaking course, again more fear will arise. As this is constantly acknowledged and surrendered, we become aware that we have courage in our capacity at least to face our fears and take action to overcome them.
The level of courage has a lot of energy. That energy takes the form of letting go of residual fear, anger, and desire, so that in the middle of the speaking class, we suddenly experience acceptance. With acceptance there is the freedom from resistance, which had taken the form previously of fear, apathy, and anger. Now, we begin to experience pleasure. There is the self-confidence of acceptance, “I can do it.” On the level of acceptance, there is greater awareness of others, so that in the speaking class, we become aware of the pain, suffering, and embarrassment of others in the class and begin to be concerned about them.
With the emergence of this compassion towards others, there is a loss of self-consciousness. With the emergence of selflessness come moments of peace. On the way home from the class, we experience an inner contentment, a feeling that we have grown, that we have shared with others. In the experience of sharing, we have forgotten ourselves for a few moments and have been more concerned with the happiness of someone else. We take pleasure in the accomplishments of others. In this state, there is a transforming grace, the discovery of our inner compassion, a feeling of connectedness with others, and a compassion for their suffering. With the full development of this progression, we might then share with others how we had a fear of public speaking, the steps we took to overcome it, the success we experienced, the increase of our self-esteem, and the positive changes in our relationships.
This entire progression is the basis of a great deal of the power of self-help groups: the sharing of inner experiences from the lowest to the highest levels on the scale of emotions. That which in the beginning seemed formidable and overwhelming has now been surmounted and handled, with the resultant increase of aliveness and well-being. This increase in self-esteem then spills over into other areas of life, and the increase in confidence results in greater material abundance and capability in vocational functioning. On this level, love takes the form of sharing and encouraging others, and our activities are constructive instead of destructive. The energy radiated out is then positive and attractive to others, resulting in a constant positive feedback.
Once we have experienced this progression up the scale of emotions in any one particular area, we now begin to realize that it can be done in other areas of limitation in our lives. Behind all of the “I can’ts” are merely “I won’ts.” The “I won’ts” mean “I am afraid to” or “I am ashamed to” or “I have too much pride to try, for fear I might fail.” Behind that is anger at ourselves and circumstances engendered by pride. Acknowledging and letting go of these feelings brings us up to courage and, with that, finally acceptance and an inner peacefulness, at least as it regards the area which has been surmounted.
Apathy and depression are the prices we pay for having settled for and bought into our smallness. It’s what we get for having played the victim and allowed ourselves to be programmed. It’s the price we pay for having bought into negativity. It’s what results from resisting the part of ourselves that is loving, courageous, and great. It results from allowing ourselves to be invalidated by ourselves or others; it is the consequence of holding ourselves in a negative context. In reality, it is only a definition of ourselves that we have unwittingly allowed to happen. The way out is to become more conscious.
What does it mean, “to become more conscious”? To begin with, becoming more conscious means to start looking for the truth for ourselves, instead of blindly allowing ourselves to be programmed, whether from without or by an inner voice within the mind, which seeks to diminish and invalidate, focusing on all that is weak and helpless. To get out of it, we have to accept the responsibility that we have bought into the negativity and have been willing to believe it. The way out of this, then, is to start questioning everything.
There are many models of the mind. One of the most recent has been that of the computer. We can look at the mind’s concepts, thoughts, and belief systems as programs. Because they are programs, they can be questioned, cancelled, and reversed; positive programs can replace negative ones if we so choose. The smaller aspect of ourselves is very willing to accept negative programming.
If we look at the source of our thoughts, begin to identify their origins, and stop the vanity of labeling them as “mine” (and therefore sacrosanct), we notice that thoughts can be looked at objectively. We see that their origins were often the early childhood training from parents, family, and teachers, as well as dribbles and drabbles of information we picked up from playmates, newspapers, movies, television, radio, church, novels, and the automatic input from our senses. All of this went on unwittingly without our having exercised any conscious choice. Not only that, but out of our unconsciousness, ignorance, innocence, and naïveté, plus the nature of the mind itself, we ended up as the composite of all the negative garbage prevalent in the world. Furthermore, we concluded that it applied to us personally. As we become more aware, we begin to realize that we have a choice. We can stop giving authority to all the mind’s thoughts, begin to question them, and find out if there is really any truth in them for ourselves.
The feeling state of apathy is associated with the belief, “I can’t.” The mind doesn’t like to hear it, but in reality most “I can’ts” are “I won’ts.” The reason the mind doesn’t want to hear this is because “I can’t” is a cover-up for other feelings. These feelings can be brought to awareness by posing the hypothetical question to oneself, “Is it true that I won’t rather than that I can’t? If I accept that ‘I won’t,’ what situations will be brought up and how do I feel about them?”
As an example, let’s say we have a belief system that we can’t dance. We say to ourselves: “Perhaps that’s a cover-up. Maybe the truth is that I don’t want to and I won’t.” The way we can find out what the feelings are is to envision ourselves as going through the process of learning to dance. As we do that, all of the associated feelings now start to come up: embarrassment, pride, awkwardness, the sheer effort of learning a new skill, and the reluctance about the time and energy involved. As we replace “I can’t” with “I won’t,” we uncover all of these feelings, which can then be surrendered. We see that learning to dance means we have to be willing to let go of pride. We look at the cost and ask ourselves, “Am I willing to continue to pay this price? Would I be willing to let go of the fear of not succeeding? Would I be willing to let go of resisting the effort required? Would I be willing to let go of the vanity so that I could allow myself to be awkward as a learner? Could I let go of my stinginess and smallness and be willing to pay for the lessons and give the time?” As all of the associated feelings are surrendered, it becomes very clear that the real reason is unwillingness—not incapacity.
It must be remembered that we are free to acknowledge and surrender our feelings, and we are free not to surrender. As we examine our “I can’ts” and find out that they are really “I won’ts,” it doesn’t mean that we have to let go of the negative feelings that result in the “I won’ts.” We are perfectly free to refuse to let go. We are free to hang on to negativity as long as we want. There is no law that says we have to give it up. We are free agents. But it makes a big difference in our self-concept to realize that “I won’t do something” is quite a different feeling than to think that “I’m a victim and I can’t.” For instance, we can choose to hate somebody if we want. We can choose to blame them. We can choose to blame circumstances. But being more conscious and realizing that we are freely choosing this attitude puts us in a higher state of consciousness and, therefore, closer to greater power and mastery than being the helpless victim of a feeling.
Blame
One of the biggest blocks to overcome in getting out of depression and apathy is that of blame. Blame is a whole subject in itself. Looking into it is rewarding. To begin with, there are a lot of payoffs to blame. We get to be innocent; we get to enjoy self-pity; we get to be the martyr and the victim; and we get to be the recipients of sympathy.
Perhaps the biggest payoff of blame is that we get to be the innocent victim and the other party is the bad one. We see this game played out in the media constantly, such as the endless blame games dramatized in a multitude of controversies, mudslinging, character assassinations, and lawsuits. In addition to the emotional payoff, blame has considerable financial benefits; therefore, it is a tempting package to be the innocent victim, as it is often financially rewarded.
There was a famous example of this in New York City many years ago. A public conveyance accident occurred. People poured out of the front door of the vehicle, then gathered in a small crowd, furnishing their names and addresses for future financial benefit. Bystanders quickly caught on to the game and secretly climbed into the back of the vehicle, so that they could then emerge from the front as injured, “innocent victims.” They hadn’t even been in the accident, but they were going to collect a reward!
Blame is the world’s greatest excuse. It enables us to remain limited and small without feeling guilty. But there is a cost—the loss of our freedom. Also, the role of victim brings with it a self-perception of weakness, vulnerability, and helplessness, which are the major components of apathy and depression.
The first step out of blame is to see that we are choosing to blame. Other people who have had similar circumstances have forgiven, forgotten, and handled the same situation in a totally different way. We earlier saw the case of Viktor Frankl, who chose to forgive the Nazi prison guards and to see a hidden gift in his experience at the concentration camps. Because others, such as Frankl, have chosen not to blame, that option is also open to us. We have to be honest and realize that we are blaming because we choose to blame. This is true, no matter how justified the circumstances may appear to be. It is not a matter of right or wrong; it is merely a matter of taking responsibility for our own consciousness. It is a totally different situation to see that we choose to blame rather than to think that we have to blame. In this circumstance, the mind often thinks, “Well, if the other person or event is not to blame, then I must be.” Blaming others or ourselves is simply not necessary.
The attraction of blame arises in early childhood as a daily occurrence in the classroom, playground, and at home among siblings. Blame is the central issue in the endless court proceedings and lawsuits that characterize our society. In truth, blame is just another one of the negative programs that we have allowed our mind to buy because we never stopped to question it. Why must something always be someone’s “fault”? Why must the whole concept of “wrong” be introduced to the situation in the first place? Why must one of us be wrong, bad, or at fault? What seemed like a good idea at the time may not have turned out well. That’s all. Unfortunate events may have just happened.
To overcome blame, it is necessary to look at the secret satisfaction and enjoyment we get out of self-pity, resentment, anger, and self-excuses, and to begin to surrender all of these little payoffs. The purpose of this step is to move up from being a victim of our feelings to choosing to have them. If we merely acknowledge and observe them, begin to disassemble them, and surrender the component parts, then we are consciously exercising choice. In this way, we make a major move out of the morass of helplessness.
It is helpful in overcoming resistance and taking responsibility for our negative programs and feelings to see that they come from the small aspect of ourselves. It is the very nature of the smallest part of ourselves to think negatively, so there’s an unconscious tendency to agree readily to its limited viewpoint. But that is not the whole of our beingness; for outside and beyond the smaller self is our greater Self. We may not be conscious of our inner greatness. We may not be experiencing it, but it is there. If we let go of our resistance to it, we can begin to experience it. Depression and apathy, therefore, result from the willingness to hang on to the small self and its belief systems, plus the resistance to our Higher Self, which consists of all of the opposites of the negative feelings.
It is the nature of the universe that everything in it is represented by its equal and opposite. Thus, the electron’s equal and opposite is the positron. Every force has an equal and opposite counter-force. Yin is compensated for by Yang. There is fear but there is also courage. There is hatred but its opposite is love. There is timidity but there is also bravery. There is stinginess but also generosity. In the human psyche, every feeling has its opposite. The way out of negativity is, therefore, the willingness to acknowledge and let go of negative feelings and, at the same time, the willingness to let go of resisting their positive opposite. Depression and apathy are the result of being at the effect of the negative polarity. How does this work in everyday life?
Let’s look again at the example of someone’s birthday that is approaching quickly. Because of things that have happened in the past, we have resentments and feel unwilling to do anything for the birthday. Somehow, it just seems impossible to get out and shop for a birthday present. We resent having to spend the money. The mind conjures up all kinds of justifications: “I don’t have time to shop”; “I can’t forget how mean she was”; “She should apologize to me first.” In this case, two things are operating: clinging to the negative and the smallness in ourselves, and resisting the positive and the greatness in ourselves. The way out of apathy is to see, first of all, that “I can’t” is an “I won’t.” In looking at the “I won’t,” we see that it is there because of negative feelings and, as they come up, they can be acknowledged and let go. It is also apparent that we are resisting positive feelings. These feelings of love, generosity, and forgiveness can be looked at one by one.
We can sit down and imagine the quality of generosity and let go resisting it. Is there something generous within ourselves? In this case, we may not be willing to apply it to the birthday person in the beginning. What we can begin to see is the existence of such a quality as generosity within our consciousness. We begin to see that, as we let go resisting the feeling of generosity, there is generosity. We do, in fact, enjoy giving to others under certain circumstances. We begin to remember the positive flood of feeling that comes upon us when we express gratitude and acknowledge the gifts that others have given us. We see that we have really been suppressing a desire to forgive and, as we let go of the resistance to being forgiving, there emerges the willingness to let go of the grievance. As we do this, we stop identifying with our small self and become consciously aware that there is something in us that is greater. It is always there but hidden from view.
This process is applicable in all negative situations. It enables us to change the context by which we perceive our current situation. It enables us to give it a new and different meaning. It lifts us up from being the helpless victim to the conscious chooser. In the example given, it doesn’t mean that we have to rush out and buy a birthday gift. But it does mean that we are now aware that we are in our current position out of choice. We have total freedom, with greater latitude of action and choice. This is a much higher state of consciousness than the helpless victim who is trapped by a past resentment.
One of the laws of consciousness is: We are only subject to a negative thought or belief if we consciously say that it applies to us. We are free to choose not to buy into a negative belief system.
How does this work in everyday life? Let’s take a common example. The newspapers report unemployment is at a record high. The television news commentator states: “No jobs are available.” At this point, we are free to refuse to buy into the negative thought form. We can say instead, “Unemployment does not apply to me.” By refusing to accept the negative belief, it now has no hold over our own life.
Examples from personal experience reveal that, during periods of high unemployment such as after World War II, there was no problem getting a job. As a matter of fact, one could have two or even three jobs at the same time: dishwasher, waiter, bellhop, cab driver, bartender, factory worker, greenhouse worker, and window-washer. This was the consequence of a belief system that said: “Unemployment applies to others but not to me,” and “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” There was also a willingness to relinquish pride in return for employment.
Another example is that of belief systems having to do with epidemic diseases. A few years ago, fourteen acquaintances were observed closely during an epidemic of flu. Of the fourteen people, eight came down with the flu, but six did not. What is important here is not that eight people came down with the flu, but that six did not! In any epidemic, there are people who do not “catch it.” Even during the depths of the depression, there were still people who became wealthy and even millionaires. The thought of poverty was “catching” in those days, but somehow those people did not buy into it; therefore, it did not apply to them. For negativity to apply to our life, we must first subscribe to it and, secondly, give it the energy of belief. If we have the power to make negativity manifest in our life, obviously our mind also has the power to make its converse come true.
Choosing the Positive
One surprising effect of the willingness to let go of our inner negativity is the discovery that the polar opposite of the negative feelings exists. There is an inner reality that we can term our “inner greatness” or “Higher Self.” It has much more power than the inner negativity. In return for letting go of the payoffs that we were getting from the negative position, we are now surprised by the positive payoffs that stem from the power of our positive feelings. For example, when we let go of blame, we experience forgiveness.
Our Higher Self, which we might say is the composite of our higher feelings, has almost unlimited capabilities. It can create employment opportunities. It can create situations for the healing of relationships. It has the power to create the opportunity for loving relationships, financial opportunities, and physical healing. As we stop giving authority and energy to all of the negative programs that stem from our own thinking, we stop giving away our power to others and begin to own it back again. This results in a rise of self-esteem, the return of creativity, and the opening of a positive vision of the future that replaces fearfulness.
We can experiment with someone with whom we have a poor relationship due to our holding of resentments. We can sit down and say to ourselves that this will merely be an experiment. The purpose for this, we tell ourselves, is strictly to learn; that is, we want to become familiar with the laws of consciousness and to watch the phenomena that occur. We acknowledge the payoffs we have been getting from our negative feelings. We surrender each component and, at the same time, let go resisting that within us which would be willing to heal the relationship. At this point, it is not necessary to have any personal contact with the other person. We are doing this experiment for our own sake and not for them.
As we look within ourselves, we ask, “What is the anger covering up?” Underneath the anger, we are likely to find fear. Aside from the fear, we also find jealousy. We find competitiveness and all the other little components of the feeling complex that have blocked the relationship. The simultaneous letting go of the negative and letting go of resisting the positive result in a shift of inner energies, and there is an accompanying subtle change in our self-esteem. Letting go of our resistance to the willingness to have something positive happen in the relationship is all that is necessary. We can then just sit back and watch what occurs. In this experiment, we are not interested in whether or not the other person “gets it.” We are only interested that we get it. We are only interested in moving our own position in the matter and, then, we just watch what happens. A very rewarding experience usually ensues, which will take different forms depending on the circumstances.
Another cause for apathy is the residual of a previously experienced traumatic overwhelm which has not been resolved. The mind projects on to the future with the expectation that the past will be repeated. When we discover this unconscious dynamic, we can choose to look again at the emotional complex, disassemble it into its component parts, let go of the negative aspects, and let go of our resistance to the positive ones. As we do this, our perspective of the future changes. We can forgive ourselves that, at the time of the previous emotional overwhelm, we simply didn’t know how to handle it. There were a lot of residuals that left us emotionally disabled at that time. But, because in the unconscious mind there is no such thing as time, we can choose at any time in the present to heal the past event. As we go through our own emotional healing for our own sake, that past event now begins to take on a different meaning. Our Higher Self begins to create a new context for it. We can see the hidden gift. We can end up acknowledging with gratitude that it gave us a new opportunity to learn, to grow, and to acquire wisdom.
One of the most common areas in which we see this emotional crippling is after divorce. All too often it is followed by bitterness and the impaired capacity to create a new loving relationship. The unwillingness to let go of the blame continues the emotional crippling, which can go on for years, or even a lifetime.
When we come upon bitterness, what we have really discovered is an unhealed area in our own emotional makeup, and the effort that we put into healing it will bring enormous rewards. In any situation which involves suffering, we have to ask ourselves: “How long am I willing to pay the cost? What were the karmic propensities to begin with? How much blame is enough? Is there a time to call an end to it? How long will I hang on to it? How much sacrifice am I willing to pay to the other person for their wrongs, real or imaginary? How much guilt is enough? How much self-punishment is enough? When will I give up the secret pleasure of the self-punishment? When does the sentence come to an end?” When we really examine it, we will always find that we have been punishing ourselves for ignorance, naïveté, innocence, and lack of inner education.
We can ask ourselves: “When was I ever trained in the techniques of emotional self-healing? When I went to school, did they teach me courses on consciousness? Did anybody ever tell me that I had the freedom to choose what went into my mind? Was I ever taught that I could refuse all of the negative programming? Did anybody ever tell me the laws of consciousness?” If not, why beat ourselves up about having innocently believed certain things? Why not stop beating ourselves up right now?
We all did what we thought was best in the moment. “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is what we can say about our past actions and those of others. We’ve all been unwittingly programmed without our conscious assent. Out of our confusion, ignorance, and naïveté, we bought into the negative programs. We let them run us. But now we can choose to stop. We can choose a different direction. We can choose to become more aware, more conscious, more responsible, and more discerning. We can refuse to sit there like a blank tape recorder, taking in every program the world hands us. The world is only too willing to exploit our naiveté and play upon our smallness, with all of its vanities and fears.
When we become aware of how we were manipulated, exploited, and taken in, anger is going to come up. Be ready to handle it. It’s okay to be angry. It’s better to be angry than apathetic by a long shot. In anger, we have a lot of energy. We can do something about it. We can take action. We can change our mind. We can reverse direction. Then, it’s easy to jump from anger to courage. On the level of courage, we can see it, examine it, and observe how it all happens.
We begin to see that our smallness was a bill of goods that we bought. In that investigation, we will stumble upon our own inner innocence. When we rediscover it, we can let go of a lot of guilt. When the guilt goes, necessity for self-punishment goes with it, and that lifts us right out of apathy and depression. We can choose to revalidate ourselves, our value, and our worth. And we can see how others were programmed just as we were. They, too, were doing what they thought was best at the time. We don’t have to blame them or ourselves any more. We can give up the whole blame game as obsolete and ineffectual.
The Company We Keep
Another valuable technique for getting out of apathy, depression, and situations which are predominantly being run by the thought, “I can’t,” is to choose to be with other persons who have resolved the problem with which we struggle. This is one of the great powers of self-help groups. When we are in a negative state, we have given a lot of energy to negative thought forms, and the positive thought forms are weak. Those who are in a higher vibration are free of the energy from their negative thoughts and have energized positive thought forms. Merely to be in their presence is beneficial. In some self-help groups, this is called “hanging out with the winners.” The benefit here is on the psychic level of consciousness, and there is a transfer of positive energy and relighting of one’s own latent positive thought forms. In some self-help groups this is called “getting it by osmosis.” It is not necessary to know how it happens, but merely that it does happen.
It is common to witness this phenomenon. For instance, in our society most people have been trained to be logical and left-brained in their orientation. However, some people from birth are right-brain oriented. Such right-brain persons are characterized by greater powers of intuition, creativity, telepathic communication, and awareness of thought forms and energy vibrations. Frequently included among these capabilities is the capacity to see the bio-energy field around the human body called the aura. When in the presence of people with this capacity, it becomes possible to share that capacity.
This was true even as a skeptical, logical, left-brain male scientist who was in the company of people with a capacity to see auras. Upon following their instructions on how to see the aura, surprisingly, there was indeed a visible field of light around people’s heads. In particular, the aura around one man seemed to be almost like “ectoplasm” hung predominantly over his left ear. On the right side of the head, however, there was practically nothing to be seen. To know whether this phenomenon was real and not coming from the imagination, it was confirmed by poking someone nearby who was adept at seeing auras. She also saw an aura that was very wide on one side and practically absent on the other.
The capacity to see auras was available only when in the presence of others with that capacity. Upon leaving the instructional situation where there had been people who could see auras, the capacity was no longer there. In the following years, when in the company of friends who could see auras, the capacity returned. One time, in the presence of a woman psychologist at a clinic—whose job was that of psychic diagnosis by means of observing people’s auras and their changing color patterns—there suddenly was the capacity not only to see auras, but also to see them in their scintillating colors and watch the aura change in response to fluctuating emotions. Just by talking with her, that capacity was suddenly available.
It is as though when we are in the proximity of the auras of people with certain capacities, some transfer of ability can take place. Simply put, we are either positively or negatively influenced by the company we keep. It is unlikely that we will overcome an inhibition if we choose to be in the company of others who have our same problem.
This phenomenon was evident in the case of a divorced woman who came for a consultation. She wanted to know whether or not she should have psychotherapy. Her complaints were a recurrent ulcer and migraine headaches. As the story unfolded, great bitterness over an unfortunately traumatic divorce came forth. She had joined a consciousness-raising feminist group, she said. She described this particular group as almost completely made up of divorced women who were bitter, angry, and hateful of men. As a group, they were getting a lot of payoff from their negativity. In reality, their lives were forlorn and rather pathetic, as they struggled to regain their self-esteem through extremes and marked emotional imbalance.
After listening to her story and investigating her life circumstances, it was suggested that instead of psychotherapy, she follow one simple recommendation for a period of three months. If it didn’t work, then, she could reassess the need for psychotherapy. The recommendation was merely to discontinue her association with the group and with her bitter, divorced friends and, instead, seek the company of people who had successfully re-established relationships despite former divorces.
At first she resisted and claimed that she had nothing in common with these group members. Then she acknowledged two basic facts. First, it was far more energy-saving to foster relationships with positive people. Secondly, one of the laws of consciousness is that “like goes to like”; bitterness attracts bitterness, whereas love attracts love. She asked herself, “Where has my bitterness taken me? Have I gotten anything out of it that is positive and helpful?” As time progressed, she stopped spending time with her group and began to pursue relationships with healthier, more balanced people.
In the company of happier people, she had an exhilarated awareness of how much negativity she was holding inside of herself. She began to be aware that she was consciously holding negativity and choosing to hold it, and she began to look at the cost of such negativity. Her whole social life changed. She became smiling and happier. Her migraine headaches disappeared. Eventually, she fell in love again and joked that falling in love was the best cure she had ever discovered for an ulcer!
If we find ourselves in the state of apathy, we can discover the underlying program by asking ourselves what we are trying to prove. Are we trying to prove that life is rotten? That this is a hopeless world? That it wasn’t our fault? That one can’t find love? That happiness is impossible? What are we trying to justify? How much are we willing to pay to be “right”? As we acknowledge and let go of the feelings that arise in response to these questions, the answers begin to appear.
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CHAPTER
21
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
This chapter includes verbatim questions and answers from workshops and seminars that have been given around the world in recent years. In anticipation of the reader’s questions, the most typical and frequently asked questions about the mechanism of surrender have been included.
Religious and Spiritual Goals
There are always a number of questions regarding the application of surrender to achieving what are generally referred to as spiritual goals, expansion of consciousness, and religious beliefs. We can answer many of these questions by making a general statement.
The letting go mechanism does not conflict with any religion or spiritual pathway or self-improvement program, nor does it disagree with any philosophy or metaphysical position. It entails no spiritual teachings of its own. Instead, it provides a mechanism so that self-understanding removes the blocks to spiritual advancement. It is also compatible with the humanistic movement. All spiritual pathways and religions emphasize the need for expanding our capacity to love, and this is essentially what the process of surrender is all about. By removing the blocks to love, the capacity to love self, others, and God is expanded.
Surrender also facilitates the basic teachings of all the world’s great religions. The essential goal of these teachings is to surrender the “small self,” commonly called “ego.” The letting go technique facilitates the goal of dissolving the small self by using a simple inner process of surrender. When the small self is transcended, the true inner Self shines forth. Let us take, for instance, the most common short means of expression of this surrendering phenomenon as given by most religions. Typically, they follow this pattern:
Let go and let God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Turn your life and will over to the care of God as you understand Him.
Surrender to what is, for God is in all things.
It is obvious that letting go of negativity facilitates the very direction that all religions and spiritual pathways urge us to take. The process of letting go is concerned primarily with feelings, and we have seen that feelings have a profound effect on our thoughts and belief systems. The experience of most people who use the mechanism of surrender is that it facilitates their spiritual and religious goals. Those who do not consciously have any religious or spiritual goals have remarked that it facilitates their capacity for lovingness, which substantially increases their happiness and well-being.
Carl Jung pointed out that, because God is one of the major archetypes in the unconscious, each person has to take a position about God whether they like it or not. Even the atheist has feelings about the concept of God. So whether God exists or not, the subject has to be dealt with sooner or later. Suppressing our feelings about God or consciously being overwhelmed by the subject is not a satisfactory solution. The letting go technique brings resolution to long-standing inner conflicts, both to the atheist and to the believer.
Question: What is the relationship of letting go to the whole concept of sin?
Answer: If we examine the negative feelings that we have been discussing and describe them in religious terminology, we see that what we have really been describing are the so-called “cardinal sins.” Inasmuch as the mechanism of surrender is a way of letting them go, it seems obvious that letting go of the attachment to these characteristics facilitates the achievement of religious teachings in our personal life.
Question: I am not a follower of any particular spiritual pathway but have my own personal pathway. How could this technique be helpful?
Answer: Without exception, all spiritual pathways are based upon a method of dissolving the ego. The ego includes the totality of our negative programs. Surrendering is the process par excellence for letting go of negative programs. It is, therefore, the best tool to facilitate spiritual understanding.
Question: Will this process interfere in any way with my faith?
Answer: On the contrary: What are the obstacles to faith? You will notice that they are all forms of negativity. Consequently, letting go of negativity would be removing the obstacles to faith.
Question: I am a nonbeliever, but I do have an interest in learning about spiritual matters. Would this approach be of any use to me?
Answer: The mechanism of surrender is a tool only. You can use it to remove the obstacles to making a million dollars; or you can use it to remove the obstacles to the development of spiritual awareness. Most people who continuously surrender report that they discover something within themselves akin to love itself, which is independent of the body, emotions, thoughts, and the events of the world. Have you ever heard of anyone becoming displeased by this discovery?
Question: Does the letting go technique contradict any spiritual or religious teachings?
Answer: A study of the subject reveals that there is no conflict between the letting go of negativity and any spiritual teaching.
Question: I gave up religion many years ago because it created so much guilt I couldn’t handle it. What would be the effect of using the letting go technique?
Answer: In clinical observations over the years, guilt emerges as the most frequent reason for which people give up their religion. It is because the goals seem unobtainable. Ask yourself what has made these goals seem unobtainable. It will always be the disparity between what one is taught they should be, as compared to what they perceive they really are. Instead of feeling guilty, try letting go of all the negative feelings that come up and wait and see for yourself what change of attitudes might occur. Again, letting go is a tool. It can be utilized to facilitate your goals in any area of life. How you use it is up to you. A good place to start is to let go of all of your guilt since it fosters an emotional environment for suffering and disease.
Meditation and Inner Techniques
Question: How does letting go and surrendering correlate with the different meditative techniques?
Answer: Almost all meditative techniques have as their goal the quieting of the mind. This is the basis of the dictum from the Book of Psalms, “Be still and know that I am God.” As most meditators have discovered, achieving silence of the mind is the main problem of meditation itself. This is because suppressed feelings constantly produce thoughts, which are the main distractions in meditation. Acknowledging and letting go of the energy behind these suppressed feelings, therefore, facilitates the goal of meditation. When the feeling behind the train of thoughts is located and surrendered, then that entire train of thought instantly stops.
By constantly surrendering, it is possible to arrive at an extremely silent state of mind. This can be accomplished as one goes about one’s daily activities, thus greatly expanding the capacity to meditate. Most meditative techniques are limited to a specified number of minutes or hours during the day. It is possible by constant surrender to reach high states of consciousness.
Question: I do not follow a spiritual pathway, but I do affirmations and visualizations. Will the letting go technique be of use to me?
Answer: Letting go greatly facilitates the power of affirmations. An affirmation is a positive statement. Its power is limited by the fact that, either consciously or unconsciously, we have multiple negative programs that are saying the very opposite thing to the affirmation. You can discover this for yourself by noticing that, as you write the affirmations, your mind comes up with, “Yeah, but … ” It is these “Yeah, buts … ” that limit the power of the affirmation and reduce its effectiveness. If you surrender the obstacles to the affirmation, you will notice a rapid increase in their effectiveness.
Psychotherapy
Question: I am in psychoanalysis. Would the letting go technique be helpful or would it be in conflict with my analysis, which is getting progressively more expensive?
Answer: Therapists who have studied the technique agree with it. Many psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists have learned it and utilize it in their practices. So far, we have heard only 100% positive evaluations of the results, because the so-called “working through” is facilitated by the patient’s capacity to let go of negativity and self-limitations, which allows the therapy to move forward much more rapidly. Psychotherapists, themselves, have found that letting go has greatly facilitated their understanding of patients and the resolution of counter-transference. If therapists know how to acknowledge and let go of negative feelings, then they can avoid the development of many stress-related illnesses during the course of their practice. Thus, the technique is considered to be of assistance in psychotherapy, increasing its effectiveness and the satisfactoriness of its outcome.
Question: I am in group psychotherapy. How would that work with the mechanism of surrender?
Answer: Just as in individual psychotherapy, the capability of surrendering one’s inner negative feelings greatly facilitates group work.
Question: I am a Jungian analyst. Would this approach fit in with my work?
Answer: Through surrender, we can free ourselves from being at the effect of the archetypes. The archetypes are obviously a collection of beliefs and feelings and are, therefore, programs like any other. The individual who uses the mechanism of surrender to let go of programmed beliefs and feelings has the power of choice over the archetypal patterns, rather than unconsciously being run by them.
Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
Question: I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), and I would like to know if others in A.A. have benefited from this technique.
Answer: The common experience is that the technique of letting go greatly facilitates working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially the Third Step. The Third Step states, “Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” This very step is frustrating to many people in A.A. because there is no how-to. Just how do you turn your will and life over to the care of God or some Higher Power? If we look at will, we see that it is desire. This desire is connected to attachments. The mechanism of surrender, therefore, facilitates freedom from attachments and is almost equal to the Third Step in its intention. Surrendering to God means letting go of one’s willfulness. Willfulness is the ego itself.
The obsession to drink is a drivenness, a compulsion due to an attachment. This can be weakened and lessened by the process of surrendering. Drinking is also an escape from the pain of negative feelings; therefore, letting go of negative feelings decreases the psychological need for escape in that particular form. This applies to other drugs as well, which are all attempts to replace a lower feeling with a higher feeling.
The letting go technique does not replace the need for self-help groups or for Alcoholics Anonymous; however, it greatly facilitates success in recovery programs and is certainly compatible with all the anonymous groups, which are based uniformly on the 12 Steps.
Relationships
Question: I’ve been on a spiritual path for many years and do not understand why I still experience negative emotions.
Answer: There’s a common illusion that spiritually evolved, loving people never have any negativity, as though they are already angelic. They get annoyed that they still have negative feelings, and then it’s compounded by their guilt and self-frustration. They have to realize that feelings are transitory, whereas their intention to evolve remains constant. Let go of feeling guilty that you are still just an ordinary human despite your angelic ambitions! Having compassion towards your innate humanness, its nervous system, and the brain function that goes with it allows for greater equanimity. Heavenly ambitions do not necessarily make us angels!
Question: I have a colleague at work who doesn’t carry his load. Every time I see him, I feel resentful. Then, I feel guilty for resenting him. How would I begin the letting go technique in that situation?
Answer: We notice and accept what our feelings are about a situation, and then we proceed to clear them as a priority rather than indulge in emotionality. In the workplace, many people think they should suppress their feelings of resentment; however, this approach does not handle the problem and the tensions will fester. With the letting go technique, go within yourself and acknowledge the negative feelings as they arise. Let them come up without suppressing them and without venting them. And then shift your attention from the feelings to something else. Let the feelings be there and let them go.
Question: You recommend that we shift attention away from the negative feeling. How is this different from repressing the feeling?
Answer: Repression is an unconscious process by which unaccepted feelings are put out of awareness and not dealt with. In shifting attention, you make a choice not to indulge the negative emotion. You have already acknowledged and accepted the feeling within yourself as part of being human, but you are choosing to let it go because you want something higher, like peacefulness, harmony, and getting the job done. People will sometimes shift their attention by way of actions such as rearranging the furniture a little bit, opening and closing the window shades, making a quick trip to the bathroom, or going for a short coffee break. These actions allow for a moment to shift from the negative to the positive.
Question: I notice there are certain feelings that seem to recur frequently, even though I use the method with regularity.
Answer: The frequent recurrence of negative feelings would indicate the necessity for a period of contemplation about recurrent patterns. For instance, the manner of handling negative emotions may follow parental or family patterns, as well as cultural ones. There is a wide variation among cultures in how to handle feelings. So, look at the unconscious underlying patterns going on with your emotional response, and let go of those patterns.
Question: What if a negative feeling toward someone or a situation persists, despite my intention and effort to let it go?
Answer: Sometimes one is more or less forced to surrender to a situation and presume that it’s karmic. With spiritual research, one finds out that it is indeed karmic. Let’s say you are paying off the karma of being mean to a lot of people! Now you get a chance to see what it’s like to have people be mean to you. Sometimes the only reasonable thing left to do is to surrender to karmic patterns. You don’t have to believe in karma as a religious doctrine in order to make this step. It’s simply accepting the basic law of human interactions that “what goes around comes around,” and most of us have not always been saints!
Question: I’m a teacher and sometimes there are students who annoy me. As their teacher I want to get over the annoyance so I can be helpful to them. What do you recommend?
Answer: First, accept the fact that you are annoyed, and that it’s okay to be annoyed. It’s the price of human consciousness. Let the annoyance come up fully without calling it anything or making it personal. Instead of resisting it, you ask for more of it. See that it’s simply the energy of negativity. That observation depersonalizes it. Then ask yourself, are you willing to let go of this energy? Often the energy will lift.
Question: I have a good marriage but there are moments of annoyance, frustration, and disagreement. How do I deal with feeling frustrated and annoyed at my spouse?
Answer: We’ve already said that it’s okay to be annoyed. That is part of being human. What you do is become familiar with what the other person is processing and their style of expression. There are often different attitudes and preferences. Very common differences are preferences over room temperature, volume settings, and how to spend money. The key is to let go of being judgmental of the other person’s preferences or feeling prideful about your own as “the right way.” Each accepts the humanness of the other and that, of course, there are sometimes going to be different attitudes.
Question: Such seemingly minor differences often lead to the downfall of a relationship because people blame the other person or want to change their behavior. How can they live peacefully instead?
Answer: You just accept that all relationships have their ups and downs. You have to have a sense of humor about the human condition itself and its seeming contradictions and paradoxes. You want the other person to be happy and comfortable, and you know that you are happy and comfortable when they are happy and comfortable. There is a mutual alignment with a peaceful lifestyle. Let go of judging, blaming, and controlling the other. Let go of expecting them to be different than they are. We all have our foibles. It can be sort of fun to make a list of your own foibles. There can be a decision not to focus on negativity in one’s environment or a relationship. People can tolerate tensions and differences for variable periods of time, and at different ages you can tolerate things more or less.
Question: What about the negative emotions that come up for parents when dealing with children?
Answer: Tolerance for children’s behaviors varies depending on cultural context, gender, age, moral views, and other factors. You put up with things in kindergarten that you don’t tolerate in third grade. It is common for parents to have to let go of expectations of their children. What’s it like for an expert musician to have a child with no musical skill or inclination? Expectations are subtle pressures on the other person, who will then unconsciously resist. In parenting, you want to relinquish expectations and personal favoritisms. If you’re an expert at billiards, can you let go of being disappointed that your kid is lousy at shooting pool?
Another common issue is over-parenting. Sometimes a parent confuses loving a grown child with bailing them out of every difficulty. At a certain age, sometimes love means “tough love,” that is, letting the child find his own way out of the mess he made so that he has the opportunity to discover his own inner resources.
Question: If I let go of a lot of guilt, wouldn’t the technique result in promiscuity?
Answer: On the contrary, promiscuity is based on low self-esteem, exploitation, and lack of love. The letting go of negativity and selfishness, concern for others, a heightened pleasure from their company, and higher self-esteem changes one’s perspective of relationships. The capacity for lovingness increases rapidly. Much of promiscuity is an attempt to overcome unconscious fears and seek reassurance. These can all be let go of, so that more mature relationships take their place.
Question: I have been going to sex therapy, which is based on behavioral retraining. Would that be compatible?
Answer: There is no incompatibility. Behavioral retraining is an attempt to replace negative programs with positive ones. Essentially, it is replacing “I can’t” with “I can.” That is what this technique of letting go is all about.
Question: Will the letting go technique cure impotence or frigidity?
Answer: It is not a cure for anything; it is a self-investigative technique that rapidly opens up awareness of inner feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Both frigidity and impotency are statements on the behavioral level of “I can’t,” which in the unconscious means “I won’t.” They are both resistances to joy, love, expression, and aliveness. The most common causes are repressed guilt, fear, and anger, emotions that spill out through the autonomic nervous system. Impotence and frigidity are expressions of conflict. Most people who use the letting go technique report overall improvements in their sexual life in a variety of ways, and many have reported recovery from sexual inhibitions. Likewise, many have also reported the relief from sexual excessiveness and excessive preoccupation with the subject.
Question: How does the mechanism of surrender relate to the process of aging?
Answer: It facilitates graceful aging. Getting older brings a big change in your lifestyle. Often there is a decline in vision, hearing, and mobility, which means you are increasingly dependent on the care of others for things that you accomplished previously without a second thought. Old age can be annoying. Suddenly, you are incompetent in areas where you once excelled. As you let go of feeling annoyed, however, you see that the incapacities of old age serve a purpose. They get you ready to leave the world. If you were still involved as a “star” in some area of life, you’d resent leaving the world. You wouldn’t be very graceful about it. As you decline, it gives you time to adjust, get used to the fact that you’ll be leaving, and do any spiritual work that you want to have completed by the time you leave here.
When you surrender to the process of aging as simply part of the human condition, you come to peace with it. You become more loving and appreciative of other people’s love and care for you. The more loving you become, you see that everybody is trying to be helpful to you. And it is loving to allow them to be helpful to you. People think, “Oh, I’m being selfish if I allow somebody to be helpful to my life.” Actually, it’s being generous. Generosity is the willingness to share your life with others. It’s a gift to people to allow them to love you.
The Mechanism
Question: How can surrendering be more constant?
Answer: The secret to using this mechanism more often and more consistently is, first of all, the wish to do so. That is Step #1. You have to want to be free of the feeling more than you want to keep it. Sometimes it is just a matter of remembering, and you can use some kind of a cue card to remind you.
Another way is to establish a routine. It is very good to start the day by surrendering your thoughts and feelings about your expectations, to picture the way you would like it to go, and to let go of all negative thoughts that would interfere with the day going in that way. Then, at the end of the day, sit down and surrender anything that came up during the course of the day that you overlooked or didn’t have time to pay attention to. This is called “cleaning up,” and most people find that they sleep better.
Another way is to keep a notebook where you write down your successes. You might put down the goal of constant surrendering and follow it up with what the results were.
Another way is to let go of your resistance to surrendering and, as you start the day, reaffirm your intention to let go of all negativity that day. You also reaffirm that you are free not to surrender. After all, it is totally a matter of choice. Let go of any feeling of compulsion about it. There isn’t any “should.”
Question: What do you think is the most frequent cause for our resistance to surrender?
Answer: We think that somehow, if we hang on to that feeling, it is going to get us what we want. If we get stuck in a feeling, it is useful to look at the question of what we think we have accomplished by hanging on to it. We will almost always find that we have a fantasy that it will have some effect on some other person and change their behavior or attitudes toward us. If we let go of that, we become willing to let go of the feeling.
Question: If I surrender all the time, won’t I just become passive?
Answer: On the contrary, surrendering will clear the decks for effective action. Passivity is often because of inhibition and a failure to see alternate ways to handle a situation. For instance, a person will say, “In the conference, he got me so mad I just sat there and said nothing.” Now it’s rather clear what the problem is. The saying nothing was due to the anger and the person’s picturing that the only emotional response he could make would be anger. Since this would be inappropriate in a business situation, he said nothing. Had the anger been let go, the person could have been confidently assertive and stated his opinion instead of clamming up.
Question: In therapy, I learned how to express anger, and I think it is a very useful thing. Do I have to give it up?
Answer: If you look at anger, you will see that its basis is almost always fear. We get angry because we have been threatened. The threat arouses fear. The fear means we feel that we are unequal to the situation. Anger biologically is like swelling up to intimidate our opponent. Anger is coming from weakness rather than strength. The person who has surrendered is, therefore, relying on strength rather than weakness. The person who has surrendered does not have to fall back upon anger to handle a situation. Also, anger cannot be counted upon. In addition, it has many destructive effects; for example, it is running you instead of your running it. A totally surrendered person is free to choose to express anger if they wish, but it is done out of choice, not out of necessity. Anger, especially chronic anger, has deleterious effects on the body organs, and research in psychosomatic medicine has indicated that repressed anger is associated with hypertension, arthritis, and a variety of other diseases.
Question: You mentioned that surrender is a natural psychological mechanism of the mind. If that is so, how come we have to learn how to do it?
Answer: Although it is true that surrender or letting go is a natural mechanism of the mind, it must be remembered that the mind has multiple conflicting motivations. Whereas one part of your mind would like to be free of the tension from a feeling, another part of your mind is programmed to believe that hanging on to the feeling will somehow magically bring about some desired end. Unless one is conscious and aware and has mastered the technique, the conflicts of the mind will overrule and dominate. Basically, the technique of letting go gives you the power of choice over the tendencies of mind. Instead of being at its effect, the mind is now under your mastery. It opens up freedom and the capacity for free choice.
Question: I have a hard time with acceptance. What do you recommend?
Answer: Divert your attention to that which is really essential, experientially. Some days it rains; some days it’s sunny; some days it’s cloudy. You can’t change the rain, but you can put on your raincoat. You can be realistic and take the necessary steps to remain dry. There are many aspects of life you can’t change, but you can let go of your expectation or need that they be different from what they are. With observation, for instance, you will notice that there is always a war going on somewhere in the world. So to be peaceful, it is necessary to accept that waging war is part of human nature and has been throughout all of recorded time. Mankind has been at war 97% of the time.
Question: I realize that fear and insecurity have driven me all of my life, but it seems like those drives account for my financial success. If I learn how to surrender, will this adversely affect my income?
Answer: When a lower motivation has been let go, the mind automatically replaces it with a higher feeling and a higher motivation. What’s wrong with enjoying earning a living instead of being driven by fear? The same activity will continue but now from a pleasurable space, and it will start bringing in many rewards other than just financial.
Question: Without guilt, won’t people misbehave?
Answer: Similar to a previous answer, loving concern for others replaces inhibition due to guilt. The more loving we become, the more harmless we become to others and to society in general. When you are lovingly concerned for the welfare of others, your own welfare will be taken care of and covered.
Question: I have a poor memory. Do you think I could learn this technique?
Answer: There is nothing to memorize in learning this technique. It is simply a way of letting go. As yet, we have not heard of anyone unable to learn it.
Question: Sometimes I think I am letting go, and sometimes I’m not sure. I get confused. What is the problem?
Answer: Look at the resistances to the process of surrendering itself. Are there any negative thoughts, doubts, or feelings about your ability to do the technique? Let all of these resistances come up, accept them, and let them go. Clarify your intention to become a happier, more loving and peaceful person.
Surrender to the Ultimate
Question: You’ve mentioned “surrender at great depth” as a method by which we experience Ultimate Reality. Can you describe what occurs?
Answer: We might call it the “final run.” As you apply the letting go technique to every area of life, without exception, the energy of spiritual work gets stronger and stronger. There is the fixity of attention, the relentless staying with a method, no matter what is going on.
Some people say, “I’ve done spiritual work off and on for 30 years, and I’m still where I was.” They’ve meditated a little there, prayed a little here, gone to a workshop, heard a speaker, read a book, and it has all been sporadic. That’s all right. You are busy in the world and accumulating data that you know you’re going to use at a later date.
But then there comes a time when it means to do whatever practice you’re doing without exception, all the time. The devotion to the Truth becomes overwhelming. It i